Monday, November 21, 2016

Eye on Iran: Obama Seeks to Fortify Iran Nuclear Deal


   EYE ON IRAN
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The Obama administration is considering new measures in its final months in office to strengthen the landmark nuclear agreement with Iran, senior U.S. officials said, with President-elect Donald Trump's first appointments foreshadowing an increasingly rocky road for the controversial deal. Action under consideration to buttress the pact includes steps to provide licenses for more American businesses to enter the Iranian market and the lifting of additional U.S. sanctions. The effort to shore up the agreement was under way before the election and is not aimed at boxing in Mr. Trump, who opposes the deal, the officials said. Officials also acknowledged the proposals are unlikely to make the nuclear agreement more difficult to undo. Mr. Trump's first two picks for his national security team-retired Army Gen. Mike Flynn as national security adviser and Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.) as Central Intelligence Agency director-are hard-liners on Iran who have voiced opposition to the nuclear deal... Within the Obama administration, officials say they recognize that there is little they can do from a policy perspective if the incoming administration is determined to scuttle the accord. But they plan to make a forceful case to the president-elect's team of the grim consequences they believe the U.S. would face if it ended up being blamed for the agreement's failure.

Airbus Group SE said it's evaluating the implications of a congressional vote that could block it and Boeing Co. from providing jets to Iran, though hasn't given up on completing a $27 billion order announced in January. Airbus will wait to see how the U.S. Senate and President Barack Obama respond to the House decision, Claude Brandes, its vice president with responsibility for customer finance in the Mideast, said in an interview. Even if the Iran sale wins a reprieve, the vote has created a "state of uncertainty" just as the European company is negotiating final terms. "Whatever the substance of the measure it's not great in terms of timing," Brandes said. "We need to see the wording and we need to see how the Iranians react." Whether or not Obama vetoes the House measure, as the White House has suggested, it "doesn't bode well" for when President-elect Donald Trump takes over, he said. Trump has said he wants to tear up or renegotiate the nuclear deal to which the aircraft sales are tied. Brandes said Airbus might be able to go ahead with the delivery of a single A321 narrow-body before the end of this year should Iran pay in cash, though the aircraft "was discussed as part of a package" and a final contract would still need to be signed. The planemaker had also discussed supplying four A330 wide-bodies by May, he said.

Syria's government hopes a brutal siege will vanquish rebel holdouts in the city of Aleppo, a key battleground. But Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's troops aren't leading the charge. That task has been taken up by thousands of Shiite militiamen from Lebanon, Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan who are loyal to Iran, a Shiite country and perhaps Assad's most important ally... The militias appear to be forming a sophisticated ground coalition that has further bolstered Iran's influence in Syria, alarming even officials in Assad's government, said Phillip Smyth, an expert on Shiite militias at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "They are building a force on the ground that, long after the war, will stay there and wield a strong military and ideological influence over Syria for Iran," he said... To the rebels, the Iranian-backed militiamen are extremists. "They are spreading Iran's influence and their extremist ideology, but our revolution is not about religion; it's about freedom and dignity," said Abdulmunem Zaineddin, a religious scholar involved with rebel forces in the battles in Aleppo.

IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL

Mike Pompeo, Donald Trump's nominee as CIA director, is a fierce critic of the Iran nuclear deal and wants to restore surveillance programmes stopped after the Edward Snowden revelations... With his name circulating as a candidate for the Central Intelligence Agency post, Mr Pompeo took to Twitter on Thursday to promise action on the Iran deal. "I look forward to rolling back this disastrous deal with the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism."

Chuck Schumer is putting Donald Trump on notice: Just because the incoming Senate Minority Leader opposed President Barack Obama's nuclear deal with Iran doesn't mean he'll work with Trump to dismantle it. Schumer, who infuriated liberal groups by opposing the Iran pact last year, told POLITICO on Friday that while he remains "skeptical" of the agreement, "it would be wrong to repeal it now." His warning comes as other detractors of the deal also urge Trump to keep the deal intact, despite the president-elect's campaign vow to scrap it. "I'm willing to try. I think the jury's still out, and I'm willing to wait another year or two," Schumer said in an interview in his Capitol Hill office, two days after the New Yorker officially took the helm of Democrats' 48-member caucus for the next Congress.

NUCLEAR & BALLISTIC MISSILE PROGRAM

Iran has begun to export excess quantities of heavy water, which could be used in the process to make atomic arms, as it moves to end a small but significant violation of a landmark nuclear deal, according to diplomats and an Iranian news site. Heavy water is used to cool reactors that can produce substantial amounts of plutonium. That, in turn, can be applied to making the fissile core of nuclear warheads. A recent report from the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency said that Tehran had more heavy water in storage than called for by the agreement between it and six world powers. While the overhang was slight - 100 kilograms (220 pounds) over the allotted 130 metric tons - it is the second time that Iran had exceeded its limit since the deal came into effect in January. U.S. diplomats have criticized the violation, and with the incoming U.S. administration warning it could try to overturn the deal, Iran's repeated breach of its commitment is adding concerns about its durability.

Iran has sent some "surplus" heavy water to Oman, an Iranian nuclear spokesman was quoted as saying on Sunday, after a U.N. atomic watchdog said Tehran was over a soft limit set under its nuclear deal with major powers. "In view of the progress of talks with several foreign firms and countries to purchase heavy water, some quantities of Iran's surplus production has been transferred to Oman," said Behrouz Kamalvandi, spokesman for Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, according to the Iranian Students' News Agency (ISNA). ISNA said Kamalvandi told the agency that more heavy water would be sent to Oman as talks with oversees buyers made progress. He did not give details.

U.S.-IRAN RELATIONS

At first blush, the election of Donald J. Trump would seem to be bad news for Iran. But there is a chance that on balance, things could work out surprisingly well for the clerics. Publicly, Iran's leaders stress that they pay little heed to what happens in the United States, that they pride themselves on their independence. "It makes no difference for Iran who the next U.S. president is," the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in a speech last week. Yet he could hardly miss Mr. Trump's promises on the campaign trail to "tear up" the landmark nuclear agreement reached last year, which he frequently described as the worst deal ever. In response, Ayatollah Khamenei said recently that if Mr. Trump tore it up, "we will set fire to it." But Mr. Trump also presents new opportunities for Iran, many analysts say. While he has criticized the nuclear deal, he has also said that the United States should stop backing rebels in Syria and focus on the Islamic State militant group - effectively shifting its support to Iran's ally in Syria, President Bashar al-Assad.

Former CIA Director Michael Hayden said early Sunday that the Obama administration is held hostage by the Iran nuclear agreement. "We don't push back on Iran in a whole lot of other places," Hayden told ABC's "This Week." Hayden, a critic of the Iran deal, said United States foreign policy in the next administration should push back against Iran in Iraq, Syria, and the Gulf states. "If the Iranians want to walk away from the deal, fine," he added.

SANCTIONS RELIEF

Chinese telecoms equipment group ZTE Corp said on Friday it has won a further reprieve to Feb. 27 on export restrictions that were imposed on the company by the U.S. government. In March, the U.S. Commerce Department hit ZTE with some of the toughest-ever U.S. export restrictions for allegedly breaking sanctions against Iran but has since issued temporary reprieves on the curbs. The latest reprieve comes after ZTE said this week it had appointed Matthew Bell as its new chief export compliance officer based in the United States. If imposed, a ban for U.S. component makers and software firms to do business with ZTE could cut off much of the Chinese network equipment and smartphone maker's supply chain.

Iranian banks are trying to catch up with the rest of the world. After years of isolation left them with outdated practices, they're attempting to fall in line with international standards of transparency so they can better attract business and integrate with the global industry. The central bank has instructed local lenders to set up compliance departments and risk management programs, and to implement globally accepted accounting practices so the economy can take further advantage of the easing of international sanctions under the 2015 nuclear deal. The central bank "felt the need to address and resolve the issues our banks have," Vice Governor Peyman Ghorbani said in an interview on the sidelines of the Frankfurt European Banking Congress. "Good steps have been taken."

SYRIA CONFLICT

U.S. President Barack Obama said on Sunday that chaos in Syria could persist for "quite some time" and that Russian and Iranian support for President Bashar al-Assad's air campaign had emboldened the Syrian leader's crackdown on rebels. "I am not optimistic about the short-term prospects in Syria," Obama said at a news conference in Lima at the conclusion of a summit with leaders of Pacific Rim countries. "Once Russia and Iran made a decision to back Assad and a brutal air campaign and essentially a pacification of Aleppo regardless of civilian casualties, children being killed or wounded, schools or hospitals being destroyed, then it was very hard to see a way in which even a trained and committed moderate opposition could hold its ground for long periods of time," he said.

HUMAN RIGHTS

A British-Iranian woman serving a five-year jail sentence in Iran is at breaking point after going on a five-day hunger strike in protest against her incarceration, according to her husband. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with Thomson Reuters Foundation, is being held at Tehran's Evin prison. In September she was found guilty of offences relating to national security, but the precise reason for her arrest has not been clarified... "She is at breaking point," her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, told the Guardian. "When [Iranian-Canadian professor] Homa Hoodfar was released [in September], she was really hopeful that she would be next and she got moved into a big room. She was very excited. Then she got moved back to a small room, which sent her down to a sense that nothing is going to happen, and that's when she started feeling suicidal." Ratcliffe said he last spoke to his wife a week ago but only found out about the hunger strike late last week when her family were summoned to the prison.

A British mother has been held prisoner in Iran for seven months because of an outstanding £500million debt owed by the UK Government, her family as claimed... her husband Richard Ratcliffe claims she is being used as a 'bargaining chip' between Britain and Iran... He said his family has been 'caught up' in a disagreement between the two countries, claiming the UK owes about £500 million for a tank deal 40 years ago. He said: 'There is a link as to why Nazanin is still being held and the UK government's reluctance to pay its debts. My family are caught as collateral.'

DOMESTIC POLITICS

The website of Iran's Supreme Leader is reporting that he has appointed a new chief for the national army's ground forces. The Saturday report says Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has final say on all state matters, has appointed Gen. Kiumars Heidari to the post. The 52-year-old Heidari was formerly the acting commander of the ground forces. He is a veteran of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war that cost both sides over a million people. Separately, Khamenei also appointed the former chief of ground forces Gen. Ahmad Reza Pourdastan to the post of acting commander of the army. Pourdastan has served seven years in the post.

Germany says Russia and Iran are partly responsible for the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people besieged by Syrian government forces in Aleppo. German government spokesman Steffen Seibert says the forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad wouldn't be able to continue pounding the city without the help of its foreign allies. Seibert told reporters in Berlin on Monday that "it's obviously the Russian and Iranian support for the ... Syrian regime which has caused a dramatic worsening of the situation for the population."

OPINION & ANALYSIS

For years, many Republicans and conservatives have charged that President Barack Obama was shielding embarrassing intelligence and policy details about Iran in order to support the nuclear deal reached last year. With Donald Trump's upset victory, the party of Lincoln will have an opportunity to declassify and disclose this information. While no decisions have been made, two early picks to Trump's cabinet suggest this is going to happen. Let's start with retired general Michael Flynn, the next president's choice to be national security adviser. Flynn served for two years as Obama's director of the Defense Intelligence Agency from 2012 to 2014. Just as relevant, however, is that in 2011 he ran a team at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that reviewed the troves of material captured in the 2011 Osama bin Laden raid. Under Obama, the intelligence community has declassified a small fraction of those documents and released them in drips and drabs. This prompted Flynn, after he retired in 2014, to charge that the disclosures were selective. Flynn has said in interviews and writings that some documents captured in the bin Laden raid showed a much tighter relationship between Iran and al-Qaeda than previously disclosed. The book he wrote this year with historian Michael Ledeen, "Field of Flight," says, "One letter to bin Laden reveals that al-Qaeda was working on chemical and biological weapons in Iran."






Eye on Iran is a periodic news summary from United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) a program of the American Coalition Against Nuclear Iran, Inc., a tax-exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Eye on Iran is not intended as a comprehensive media clips summary but rather a selection of media elements with discreet analysis in a PDA friendly format. For more information please email press@uani.com.

United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) is a non-partisan, broad-based coalition that is united in a commitment to prevent Iran from fulfilling its ambition to become a regional super-power possessing nuclear weapons.  UANI is an issue-based coalition in which each coalition member will have its own interests as well as the collective goal of advancing an Iran free of nuclear weapons.

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